Family Of Girl With Rope Burn Sues Texas Private School For Over $3 Million

The parents of a 12-year-old Waco, Texas girl who was the victim of an alleged racially motivated attack filed a lawsuit against Live Oak Classical School on Monday, according to The Dallas Morning News. The names of the children involved are being withheld due to their age.

“It looked like somebody had ripped her neck apart and stitched it back together,” the girl’s mother, Sandy Rougely, told The Dallas Morning News last month after the incident occurred.

The girl was with classmates on an overnight trip to a Texas ranch when she said three White boys assaulted her with a rope from a hanging swing. She told authorities that no adults were around to witness the incident. Rougely said she notified the school several times about the same group for prior incidents of bullying.

On Monday, Rougely filed a lawsuit in Travis County for damages over $3 million against the school and Lawrence Germer, the owner of the ranch. According to The Dallas Morning News, Germer is the father of the school’s dean and is an attorney.

In response, Live Oak said the girl’s injuries were the result of an unfortunate accident and asked the family not to jump to conclusions. David Deaconson, the school’s attorney, gave a statement:

“We all know anybody can allege anything in a lawsuit. That doesn’t make it true,” he said. “We also need to keep in mind we’ve got 12-year-old kids involved, and adults need to react in a way that doesn’t put the 12-year-olds’ safety at risk, which many of them already have.”

The school released a prior statement saying they diligently interviewed all adults and students present. But the girl’s lawyers and her family are skeptical since they believe there were no eyewitnesses, which would make the interviews invalid. They also condemn how the school handled the incident.

Rougely says she was not notified of her daughter’s injury, but was made aware when she picked her up from the trip. From a distance, she thought the scar was a necklace around her daughter’s neck. The girl said a doctor who was a chaperone on the trip examined the scar. She also told her mother the school staff gave her ibuprofen and coated the injury with Vaseline.

Rougely has removed her daughter from Live Oak for the remainder of the school year.